Sulawesi Roller

The purple-winged roller (Coracias temminckii) belongs to bird in the family Coraciidae. The purple-winged roller was formally described in 1819 by the French ornithologist Louis Pierre Vieillot under the binomial name Garrulus temminckii. The specific epithet was chosen to honour the Dutch ornithologist Coenraad Jacob Temminck. The purple-winged roller is now one of nine species placed in the genus Coracias that was introduced by Carl Linnaeus in 1758. (Wikipedia, general species account).

Its natural range is restricted to the Sulawesi subregion in Indonesia and can be found on the islands of Sulawesi, Bangka, Lembeh, Manterawu, Muna and Butung. Its natural habitat is subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests. The type locality is the island of Sulawesi. A molecular phylogenetic study published in 2018 found that the purple-winged roller was most closely related to the Indochinese roller (Coracias affinis). The phylogenetic relationships among the Coracias species are shown below, from the molecular study by Johansson et al. (2018) Alternate names for the purple-winged roller include the Celebes roller, Sulawesi roller, and Temminck's roller. (Wikipedia, general species account).